The US may not be able to singlehandedly put a live man into space right now, but Virginia politicians may be about to boost the number of dead Americans catapulted into orbit.
The Virginia General Assembly is soon to consider a bill that will allow an income tax deduction of up to $8,000 (£5,100) for burials in space, WTVR …

So basically...

if you died filthy stinking rich, and your heirs decide to lavishly spend a wad of dough to shoot your ashes into space, they'll get a big tax deduction for that. Great. What a way to protect the bourgeoisie lifestyle.

Meh

Tax loopholes to promote certain industries ALWAYS suck, regardless. Look at the current "green" debacles and how effective those industries are. Take away the tax favoritism and they would vanish overnight!

So many questions...

Isn't the prime reason for having a funeral is that the guest of honor is dead?

If a funeral is a way to preserve a "lifestyle", with the actual event only occurring once in order to send the remains off, why isn't it more appropriately called a "disposalstyle"?

I also don't get the association with the 'bourgeoisie' bit. Being dead, the funeral participant has no money, and therefore can't be a member of the 'bourgeoisie'. Otherwise, the OWS crowd also needs to camp out at cemeteries and graveyards, protesting oversized headstones, tombs, and other monuments reflecting the conspicuous consumption of the dead, which can be significantly higher in cost than what's been mentioned here.

I'd also like to point out that nobody outside of a freshman level political science classes uses the term 'bourgeoisie' anymore. That would be because normal people don't want to sound like a freshman level political science student who has read one book, and thinks it solves all the world's problems, never mind the fact that there are no successful implementations of the prescription in that book. That, apparently, is learnt in the *sophomore* level political science course.

Methinks you're just outraged at the conspicuous consumption of money spent by people grieving their dead and felt the urge to open your piehole and share your 'wisdom' regarding other peoples' grief -- why don't you go hang out with the WBC crowd, and see where those sort of comments take you in actual society, as opposed to your mom's basement?

@perlcat

No, the outrage is because a tax break is being offered to the survivors on the simple grounds that they are spending money on a luxury purchase for a room-temperature corpse, whereas regular Joe doesn't get an $8000 tax break for buying a regular tombstone and burial plot for his dead wife. Hence, bourgeoise.

@pirate dave

I'll grant you that the rich do not need tax credits to bury their dead.

However, that is not so much a function of the rich being rich, as it is of plain old cronyism and shitty governance. This is just another government handout to potential donors for electioneering purposes, using the money seized from people who can least afford it.

If politicians thought us geeks could get them the cash to get their disgusting asses re-elected, there'd be tax breaks for computers & stuff. It has nothing to do with being filthy rich -- as a matter of fact, there are plenty of filthy rich on both sides of the political spectrum, leading to a massively unfair and convoluted tax code -- made convoluted especially to conceal the true amount of unfairness from both political ends of the spectrum. Neither wants the corruption to slow down, let alone stop.

If we actually had any idea how much of our money is taken out of society from those who cannot afford it and handed to people that don't need it in order to receive a tithe back in the form of political contributions, we'd have our own arab spring here.

they the peeps

The only person I remember to have his ashes shipped off into space was Timothy Leary, who was hardly the sort I can imagine the Virginia legislature regarding as a role model. On the other hand, paying taxes has never been popular in Virginia (see: Jefferson; Henry; Washington), so perhaps any old excuse will do.

Up, up and away ...

"Ground control to Major Tom"

$995/gram you say?

So for around $60 million we could blast Justin Bieber into space temorarily before he returns into a fiery oblivion high above the ocean. Twitter would then probably save that money from their bandwidth bill alone. Where do I sign?

He couldn't talk

I like the idea

but to be honest, if i could have a second thought, id be well pissed off if i ended up coming back to this place, you dont work all your life to blast off in to space to just come back down again, bugger that